On the afternoon of June 11, at Can Tho University, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan had a working session with the board of directors and key staff of Can Tho University.

Consider Can Tho University as a unit of its own ministry

At the meeting, a representative of Can Tho University said that the school currently has 1,800 employees, including 1,000 lecturers. This is a multidisciplinary training school with 106 undergraduate majors and a total of 45,000 students. In the agriculture and aquaculture sector alone, the school enrolls about 1,500 - 2,000 students each year.

To date, the school has trained 17,500 engineers, bachelors, 3,891 masters and 131 doctors related to agriculture and aquaculture, accounting for 60% of the total number of students in this field at universities in the entire Mekong Delta region.

The school recommends that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development support, introduce, facilitate and assign tasks for the school to participate in key international and national programs and projects, especially for the Mekong Delta region.

The Ministry also facilitates the school to be a satellite, connecting information in the national and regional agricultural infrastructure system.

In particular, support and create conditions for the school to form a Center for training, innovation, high-tech and sustainable agricultural and aquaculture startups in the Mekong Delta, a Center for training and intellectualization of professional farmers...

Professor Nguyen Thanh Phuong - Chairman of the Council of Can Tho University - proposed that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development consider the university as a unit of its own ministry, from which it can assign tasks and order research issues and emerging issues in the agricultural sector such as the project of 1 million hectares of high-quality, low-emission rice; technology in the agricultural sector or solving environmental problems in production.

"If this can be done, it will be very good for the Mekong Delta," he said.

Turning a student's graduation thesis into "something local"

At the meeting, Minister Le Minh Hoan also placed counter-orders with scientists from Can Tho University.

"I have thought and discussed with Dong Thap Party Secretary Le Quoc Phong that Can Tho University or other schools in the Mekong Delta should encourage and orient students to choose topics related to the locality when choosing graduation topics.

Where the students' hometown is, guide them there so that later on, their graduation thesis can become a research topic, and when they return to their locality, they can turn their graduation thesis ideas into something local.

Comrade Le Quoc Phong said if this could be done, it would be great, the province is willing to use 2% of the science budget to sponsor. With this, the faculty and school will improve, and research topics will also be more thorough.

It will liberate the story of bringing ideas from scientific research products of schools, creating revenue for schools, teachers and importantly, promoting the locality in the fields of aquaculture, cultivation, animal husbandry, agricultural mechanics...", Mr. Hoan suggested.

Minister Le Minh Hoan also recounted the story of his business trip to Australia where he saw that a farm there had reduced emissions from raising cows with only 10% of its capital coming from the government, the rest was mobilized from fellow farmers, and the results were then divided back to those who contributed capital.

"The research on white-leg shrimp should be the same. Can Tho University needs to connect and gather businesses. Of course it is difficult, convincing them is not easy," Mr. Hoan added.

In addition, Mr. Hoan also said that "people leave for Binh Duong and Dong Nai, but we rarely do research, while jobs in rural areas are very important." Therefore, Mr. Hoan suggested that Can Tho University should conduct a research project on what is the driving force and what is the pulling force of farmers in the process of agricultural change.